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Bringing in the sheaves
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August 28, 2015
Tisdale
by: Timothy W. Shire
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You may have to be my age to know what indeed a sheave is, but the cereal grain was harvested by cutting down the ripe grain then tying an arm load into a bundle called a sheaf. Mechanisation replaced the scythe with a contraption called a “binder” which cut the grain and then tied up the bundles. Manual labour was needed to assemble groups of sheaves into a stook. Then a horse drawn rack with a driver and two people with pitch forks, loaded the stooks onto the rack, then hauled the load to the thrashing machine. All of that, even the terms, are gone with the horses and field meals with pie, now replaced with the lumbering self propelled combine. Most harvesting today still involves two stages. The crop is first swathed and allowed to cure for a few days before the combine makes its rounds, Straight combining involves having the cutting mechanism mounted on the combine so it is a one step operation, usually reserved for cereal crops and peas.
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With perfect weather, this year’s harvest is moving along at a sensible pace, unlike the kind of panic some years, when the crops are late and the days are short. Cereals and canola are being harvested throughout the area and though we had some heavy rain a couple of weeks ago, the fields are in ideal harvest condition with few wet spots.
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As we drove around the area this week we saw hay crops being processed, fields already finished, swathing taking place and straight combining. The whole argicultural process can come together at this time of the year and we saw several fresh new crops up that had been planted just recently as winter crops. We also saw full scale planting operations underway.
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Beeland Co-op is very busy hustling new bins out to farms and you can not drive on a Saskatchewan road, or highway without encountering over wide truck systems moving new bins to farms. We have not seen much activity at the terminals this early in the harvest, but that is sure to come. The crops are all well enough along and the harvest process moving nicely, that a few days of wet weather is unlikely to pose any problems and just give every one a bit of a needed break.
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